back on track, budgets, books and stepping away from the screen

Am rather pleased to say that Hub and I have managed to have a very friction free chat about sticking to a budget.  We menu planned together the week ahead and we are going to stick to that and only buy what we need.  It seems so simple, but recently our weekly shopping bill has sky rocketed.  I know that prices have gone up and all, and that Hub is eating a protein rich diet, which is not cheap.  But still.  Its outta control.  For quite a while this bothered me, then I decided not to be bothered by it as it was a pointless exercise to try and deal with it on my own. I mean, what's the point of menu planning if Hub went and bought what he wanted to eat anyway.  We needed to both be involved.  And I didn't even bring up the whole sticking to our own cash budget in the week thing.  It was his idea.  Not that we are going to restrict it exactly, but we are going to track it.  Which should help us not be such spendaholics.  So.  In a whole celebration of that.  I shall be doing a tad of daily tracking here.  Sorry if tis dull to anyone!  But this is my personal blog and I can do what I likes!

Another thing I have done of late is switch off the internet at source.  I was finding myself mightily distracted by faffing about on facebook, ambling about finding new tunes on Spotify, blog reading,  checking email and sitting in front of my screen for TOO LONG all of that mallarky.   And it was irritating me and making me feel out of focus.  And given that I am now a Person Who Does and regularly dish out the tips of batch processing email and stuff, I figured it was time to do a little screen time management of my own.

It really worked.  I worked just from my next step lists for about the house.  I actuallly did the food audit I have been thinking of doing for - er - years.  And you guessed it, we have a lot of food.  So this week, as well as the Menu Plan, I am aiming to actually eat up some of it.  And am sure as hell not going to be buying any more of stuff we already have packets of (rice!!!).

I was very pleased to have done a few portraits for Mondo Beyondo folks which I had promised to do waaaay back in the summer.  And I think doing them has both loosened my eye up a little, given me some ideas to create a crafted, individual, portrait / photo / collage which is unique, but the style is replicable.  And I have some new ideas for new styles too.

Ah, and lastly I have been reading some interesting books about small business.  Well I have been reading one of the ones I bought anyway.  The first one is called The E Myth by - Michael E Gerber -  (who I am delighted to tell you did not even start to take himself seriously until he was gone 40) And the other I have bought and am yet to read, is called How to be Excellent at Anything by Tony Schwartz and Jean Gomez (yup, great title, lets see how I get on!) who run an interesting program called The Energy Project - which helps stressed out execs get their mojo back.  Or tries to stop them keeling over and popping their clogs aged 50?  Anyway, its intresting stuff.

Oh and lastly, lastly, am reading Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.  As I had a fabulous brief chat with a friend who has an idea for a kind of 'step away from the screen' convention for web designers.  I am also rather excited by the whole idea of R mode (as Betty calls it) thinking.  Which seems to be very much along the lines of what Yoga does,   And creativity requires. And is how I think..... alot of the time.  All this organisation stuff, I love it, because I am the kind of chaotic lass that needs it.  Its not my natural state!!

Well, that's my catch up and NOW, I am going to STEP AWAY from the screen!